Debate rages on over replay in baseballTop network announcers advocate change in wake of bad calls

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Replays showed third base umpire Tim McClelland, right, missed two calls in Game 4 of the ALCS, one favoring each team.

Replays showed third base umpire Tim McClelland, right, missed two calls in Game 4 of the ALCS, one favoring each team.

Photo: Harry How, Getty Images

Debate rages on over instant replay in baseball

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Thanks to the trucks and trucks of hardware assembled by Fox Sports for its postseason baseball coverage, it took less than 10 seconds for the network to show viewers that umpires had blown a call on the basepaths during Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.

But the error, and others, went uncorrected, and Major League Baseball’s limited policy on instant replay remains an issue for fans and viewers as the Yankees, who prevailed against the Twins and Angels in playoff series fraught with questionable calls, meet the Phillies in the World Series.

For the men who will call the action on TV and radio,
Joe Buck
of Fox Sports and
Jon Miller
of ESPN, the problem has a solution. Baseball, they agree, would be well-served with a replay system similar to that of college football, where selected plays are reviewed by a replay official who has authority to overturn a call at his own behest or after a manager’s challenge. “Maybe, after an initial pushback, the umpires might like the safety net,” Buck said. “Nobody is perfect. I have people who help me and correct me. But at the end of the game, the question should be whether the call was correct. Then it doesn’t become the story we had (in the ALCS).”

Booth idea

Miller suggests positioning the two baseline umpires used during the playoffs in a replay booth, with the authority to contact the crew chief in case they agree calls need to be overturned. “You wouldn’t need to have meetings or anything,” he said. “It could happen very quickly, and you could do it just for the postseason. What they have now with the boundary calls is fine. Just do something a little more in-depth for the postseason. Why not?” Baseball’s replay system governs only “boundary calls,” such as determining whether balls went over the fence or hit atop the wall, whether potential home runs were fair or foul, and whether there was fan interference on potential homers. It has been used 54 times since its introduction in August 2008, and calls were overturned in 22 cases. That policy does not address three blown calls that involved baserunning issues during Game 4 of the ALCS or an error during the Twins-Yankees series that saw a ball in fair territory ruled foul. Not even the strongest proponents of expanded replay suggest the system include balls and strikes. But as Buck noted to viewers during Game 5 of the Yankees-Angels series, playoff errors that were uncorrected and unaddressed by the current policy have called MLB’s credibility into question. “There’s been such a sea change with regard to technology used covering these games, and with it has come a sea change with the way viewers watch games and what they expect and what they see,” Buck said. “This time of year, baseball risks losing some credibility with an audience that expects more with this new technology.” Network technology could be adapted for the task, certainly during the playoffs, when Fox has 15 cameras on hand for LCS games and will have 20 for the World Series. Some producers agree the eight-camera setups used during the regular season are adequate for replay purposes. “Anything is better than nothing,” said
Mike Anastassiou
, executive producer of
Fox Sports Southwest
and Fox Sports Houston, which produces regular-season Rangers and
Astros
games. “Even with the complement that we have for Rangers and Astros games, I think we could be of great help.” FSH uses eight cameras for Astros games — two behind home plate, two in center field, one at the left-field foul pole, one on the third-base side and two on the first-base side.

Put cameras to use

For televised
Big 12 college
football games, which have camera angles monitored by the replay booth official, the network also uses eight cameras. For non-televised games, during which the camera feeds are provided for the sole purpose of replay, the network uses four cameras.
Tim Scanlan
, ESPN’s vice president of event production, said the network uses 14 cameras for Sunday Night Baseball and seven for other televised games, “and we’re still able to provide a second or third look that the umpire doesn’t have. We use the best possible location for the widest and tightest coverage.” ESPN’s camera angles also are available for replay officials at its college football games, and Scanlan said the network could provide a similar setup for baseball. “It seems to me we could easily do that,” he said. “It’s the number of games that are in question, and maybe it’s only a postseason enhancement.” Fox Sports president
Ed Goren
, meanwhile, said the network has no position on replay issues. “We televise the games,” Goren said. “When the NFL decided to put replay in, it wasn’t the networks going to the NFL. Whatever the rules of the game are is what they are. That is a baseball issue, and we leave it to the baseball people.” Even within broadcast booths, sentiment is not united on expanded replay.
Tim McCarver
, the veteran catcher who will call his 20th World Series on TV and his 12th for Fox, acknowledged that it has been a “dreadful” postseason for umpires but does not believe replay should be used to review out or safe calls. “Outside of (boundary calls),” he said, “I think the game should be left alone.”
White Sox
manager
Ozzie Guillen
, who will work for Fox during the World Series, said Monday: “I think we have to trust the umpires. We cannot make this game a computer game. We have people out there that have jobs, and no matter what the call is, we have to respect that. Sometimes that’s good for baseball. Sometimes that makes people talk about baseball.” Miller, while acknowledging the value of limited replay options, also is cautious about subjecting too much of the game to review. “TV and radio are there to cover the game and not to be an official of the game,” he said. “I’m from the old school. The TV producers and directors are not trained officials of Major League Baseball or the NFL.”

Too blatant to ignore

Still, Miller said, blatant errors could be corrected with replay. “There’s an old bromide in umpiring that if you have to show a play over and over again and freeze the frames and show it from different angles and there’s still one angle that shows one thing and another angle shows it a different way, whatever the umpire called is right,” he said. “On these other calls, if a runner is diving back to second and he’s safe by a foot or a ball hits off the left fielder’s glove two feet in fair territory, you can use the replay for that. The guys (in the replay booth) can look on their own, and a manager is going to come out and complain about it anyway. Why not use that?”
david.barron@chron.com